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Falling from Grace
“Exile.” The word that was Ithuriel’s fate rang through the Court-chamber and echoed off the murals of its domed ceiling. The air vanished from his chest all at once, and a sickly cold sweat of realization overcame him. Clockwork that had been turning for a year and seven days at last clicked to a stop, and the final component of the truth slotted itself seamlessly into place. “It was you,” he growled. “That will be all, remove him,” said the Chairman of the Council. Moloch was his name, if Ithuriel remembered correctly. Even for a high elf, his features were particularly severe. Today they betrayed nothing but thinly-veiled smugness. Two armored soldiers seized Ithuriel and began to drag him away. “If you had nothing to hide, you wouldn’t be doing this!” he screamed. “Zephurah died because he learned the truth, didn’t he!” The guards had him off the ground now, feet thrashing a hair’s breadth away from the gleaming marble floor. The Chairman examined his fingernails and dutifully ignored the commotion. Such behavior from a child of the Vanessi was beyond disgraceful in his eyes. Ithuriel struggled, muscle and sinew straining with all his might against the soldiers’ grip. “Look at me! Look at me you coward! You killed--” his voice cracked, and he crumpled, exhausted, in the hold of the soldiers. All eyes in the room fell upon this new development. Outrage at their actions could be dismissed as easily as breathing, but none present could resist the anguish of their enemies. “...My brother...you killed my brother. You...” tears streaked his face, and when he raised his head to make eye contact with the Chairman, the liquid briefly formed a lens through which he saw his new worst enemy in vicious clarity. Ithuriel dug his feet into the floor and the soldiers dragging him faltered in their step. “Hear me,” he said. “I will unmake everything you have built in shadow and paid for with innocent blood. And when all your life’s work lays before you in ruins, I will return, and I will end you...for Zephurah.” A beat passed. Moloch studied him as if he were an insect that may or may not be venomous. Then he waved a long, thin hand in dismissal and the gilded doors to the chamber shut in Ithuriel’s face. He was allowed to walk the rest of the way, albeit with a gauntlet-clad hand on each shoulder and two drawn blades hovering at his ribcage. Exile would be a problem. He desperately needed to get to his home one last time, to grab the notes and documents that would help him expose the conspiracy before the government arrived and destroyed every last object he owned. That was how it worked; with arrest and imprisonment you had your life waiting for you when you were eventually released. Even when sentenced to death for the higher crimes (a rare occurrence, but not unheard of), your family and friends could keep your worldly possessions as a reminder that you had lived. They were allowed to mourn you. Exile was different. From the moment that verdict left Moloch’s tongue, Ithuriel no longer existed in the eyes of High Elven society. Every trace of his presence would be quietly disposed of, and he could never be spoken of again under threat of life in prison. The population of Lindala (as well as all High Elves in the realm) were ordered in no uncertain terms to forget he’d ever lived. And he, the punished, would live the rest of his life banished from his home forever, knowing that he had been deliberately forgotten. The goal, as the law professed, was a death sentence by the convict’s own hand. Red sunlight glowed on the horizon when they stepped outside, bound for the windowless tower of spiral stairs that would lead him down Lindala Ened’s monolithic outer wall and into the eastern forest, where he would be locked out permanently. Ithuriel and the soldiers marched along the sheer parapet. Their golden armor articulated silently, not a rustle or clink to be heard; Zephurah had designed it that way. He had to get home, even if it meant a difficult fight to flee the city afterward. He had to get his brother’s journal before they burned it and everything else. Otherwise, all Ithuriel had were the clothes on his back—and the mask Zephurah had made him, tucked safely in the front of his loose shirt. He had to do something fast. “This isn’t fair,” Ithuriel said in the most pathetic, defeated tone he could muster. He began to drag his feet. The soldiers said nothing, after all they weren’t permitted to speak to him under the terms of exile. “I don’t want to go,” he moaned, and dramatically looked over his shoulder at the magnificent city sprawling below, with its slender white towers and silver waterfalls glittering in the sunset. He sighed, a breathy and lilting exclamation, and stopped in his tracks to stare at his beautiful home. In his defense it really was quite pretty; the perfect geometries of ancient elven designers dusted over with lush gardens and silver-capped spires, breathtakingly washed by the receding sun. The soldiers halted too, and savored a stolen glance. Ithuriel snaked his right foot back and planted it between the boots of one of his escorts, then jerked his thigh to buckle the soldier’s knee while simultaneously throwing his elbow into his sternum. The lever action of his movement threw the soldier off balance and onto his back, and Ithuriel dived for the blade he’d let go of while reflexively bracing his fall. By the time the other soldier reacted, Ithuriel had the weapon gripped in both hands and parried his lunge. He kicked the prone soldier in the temple as hard as he could, and the elf crumpled. The other soldier stabbed again, and Ithuriel dodged, stepped inside his guard, and bashed him between the eyes with the pommel of his blade. The soldier faltered, swayed, stumbled, and collapsed on top of his partner. No time to waste. He hastily stripped a pair of bracers and tassets off the soldier that looked closest to his size and threw them on over his clothes. The other pieces of armor would take too long to remove, so he left them and started sprinting back the way they came. He didn’t get far. A hundred feet out, the double doors that led from the outer wall into the High Courthouse swung open and a lower-ranking member of the Council stepped out, flanked by six identical soldiers. Ithuriel skidded to a halt, weighed his odds, and turned tail to run back in the opposite direction. “What are you waiting for!” the Councilman shouted, and the soldiers drew their spears and shortswords and gave chase. Ithuriel’s legs burned and his lungs ached from the strain of his flight. Up ahead, the soldiers he’d barely dispatched were getting to their feet. He didn’t imagine they thought highly of him, and would no doubt be back with a vengeance. He stopped again on a section of the wall that capped a tower of some kind; it bulged in a perfect ellipse that jutted out into the city at one end and the forest at the other. He paced like a cage animal while the soldiers drew ever nearer from both sides, and foolishly glanced over the sheer, unguarded edge of the wall. It was at least a hundred-foot drop to ground, where the trees were broken by the river and its cascading steps of falls and frothy pools. The height made him weak at the knees, and he backed away from the edge just as the enemy converged. “Capture him alive if you can,” one of the soldiers reminded his comrades. “And if we can’t?” another said. “Then not a soul will shed tears for the death of a traitor.” Ithuriel grit his teeth and snarled. “That bastard Moloch who you serve is the traitor. Just let me go and I’ll prove it!” The soldiers ignored him and moved in an impenetrable line, pushing him back toward the outer point of the ellipse. Five feet from the edge, Ithuriel made the choice to take a stand. He stopped and stood his ground, all the while looking his attackers directly in the eyes. The flanking soldiers barred escape with their spears, and the ones directly in front of him took a defensive stance, hoping to disarm and capture him once more so he could serve his sentence like a good little victim. No. With a ferocious cry born half from his hatred for the injustice he’d suffered, and half from grief for his fallen brother, Ithuriel charged and swung his blade furiously at the soldiers just as they reached him. He landed one or two hits that glanced harmlessly off Zephurah’s ingenious armor, received the haft of a spear to the face for his indecency, and still kept swinging at anything that would bleed. A soldier got sliced across the ribs and cursed. A boot struck him hard in the center of his chest. Ithuriel saw the blood-orange sky, and the edge of the wall, and his legs floating uselessly in midair, and he thought of Zephurah, and fell. Category:Character lore